Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014 -- Motion to Proceed -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I thank my friend from Illinois for all the work he has done on this issue and so many other issues. He knows I disagree with him on this and do not intend to vote for this bipartisan agreement.

He makes a good point in saying we don't have the votes. We don't. We don't have the votes because we have a political party here that could care less about the needs of working families and about college affordability.

I would say to my friend from Illinois that if we are going to win this fight and protect college students, we have to take the fight to the American people. When we work with Republicans to make college unaffordable, then the American people are going to say: What is the alternative?

So from a political strategy, I would say to my friend from Illinois we have the people on our side. We have parents on our side and we have young people on our side. Our job is to bring forth a proposal that they can demand be accepted. If we collapse on this issue, then they are going to be looking out and saying: What is the alternative?

The Senator from Illinois makes a valid point; that in the next few years, in fact, it is not a bad deal. It is not as good as I would like, but it is not a bad deal. That is why, as I mentioned to the Senator a few moments ago, I will be bringing forth an amendment to say: Let us sunset this agreement in 2 years. We are bringing up the higher education authorization bill. It will give us an opportunity to deal with this issue of student loans and the higher cost of college in general. Why do we need a permanent bill right now when we are going to be working in the fairly near future on the higher education bill?

So my view is a 2-year sunset to this bill. It is not everything I want, but it will protect students. If we are going to talk about variable interest rates, let them at least take advantage of lower interest rates.

What CBO is projecting is that in years to come interest rates are going to go up. According to the CBO, under this legislation, the good news is that interest rates would only be, for Stafford subsidized, 3.86; in 2014, it will be 4.6, not so good; 2015, 5.4, really not good; 2016, 6.29, worse; 2017, 7 percent; 2018, 7.25; and, by the time we get to 2023, it would also be at 7.25.

We have a crisis right now in terms of student indebtedness. Why would we want to make that crisis even worse?

The second point I would make is that right now it is estimated that the Federal Government will earn about $180 billion in profits over the next 10 years on student loans. I suggest that while I have no problem with the Federal Government making profits on this or that endeavor, this is not a particularly good area to be making profits because they are making profits off of low- and moderate-income people who want to send their kids to college.

I can think of a lot better ways to make money, to help us with the deficit, than by forcing low- and moderate-income parents and students to pay more than they should be paying. If we want to do deficit reduction, maybe we can ask the one out of four corporations in America that pays nothing in taxes to start paying their fair share of taxes. Maybe we can address growing wealth and income inequality in a way that brings us in more revenue. But it is almost a form of regressive taxation to say to low- and moderate-income students and families: You want to go to college, you want to make something of yourself, you want to make it into the middle class, you want to help make our Nation more competitive--and in a 10-year period we are going to make $180 billion in profits off of your desire to go to college. I think that is wrong.

If we look around the world, in an increasingly competitive global economy what we find is that we are at the very bottom in terms of the kind of support we give our young people and their families to go to college. Right now in Vermont, which is a little bit higher than the national average, our young people are graduating from a 4-year school $28,000 in debt. That is on average, meaning lower income young people will graduate deeper in debt.

What does it mean in a difficult economy, a challenging economy, to start off your adult life $40,000 or $50,000 in debt? If you go to graduate school, that number goes way up. I talked to a couple of young dentists in Vermont last year. They had over $200,000 in debt starting off their professional careers--dentists, doctors, people in graduate school.

A couple of months ago I had the Ambassador from Denmark come to the State of Vermont to do some town meetings with me. Do you know how much debt young people who graduate college, graduate school, medical school, in Denmark have? They have zero because that country and many other countries have made what I think is the rational conclusion that it is important to invest in our young people. We need their intellectual capital, we need the best educated workforce that we can get, and we want to encourage people to go to college, not discourage them by high college costs.

I think we can do a lot better than this bipartisan bill. The danger with the bipartisan bill is that the CBO and virtually all economists tell us interest rates are going up. If you peg your student loan to a variable interest rate, and those interest rates are going up, then the proof is in the pudding, according to the CBO, that in a number of years students are going to be paying very high interest rates.

Given the fact we are going to be dealing with higher education reauthorization within a year, which needs to tackle a whole lot of issues within the issue of higher education, including student loans, my suggestion will be, and my amendment will be to say: Let's sunset this legislation at the end of 2 years. Let's take advantage of the low-interest loans and give us the time to come up with a long-term plan.

I look forward to my colleagues supporting that amendment.

Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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